CWRS SP21 The Invasion of the Crimea by A W Kinglake. Review in The Times.
Transcribed from the period 1863-1875 by David Kelsey. Also contains a lot of the correspondence generated. This was compiled by David Kelsey some years ago now, but this reviewer believes it will always remain essential reading for those trying to understand what was going on in the war up to and including the battle of Inkerman. We have David to thank for his patient transcription and presentation in this convenient form.
Kinglake takes a hammering for his slavish support of Lord Raglan, the author's errors so great and his reasoning so fuzzy that his work actually has the unintentional opposite effect most of the time. Add to that his apparent Homeric fantasy of writing his own Iliad about a modern war - the reviewer in The Times often slyly alluding to his use of 'runs' e.g. “Airey of the keen nose and swooping crest”.At the simplest level this collection of newspaper transcriptions is a great read and very amusing. But of course it is much more than that - the critical review goes a long way to explaining the course of events, and there are many letters included from witnesses to events. For me (an interested observer of The Charge, nothing more) the most decidedly reasonable of these is the famous one from Fitz Maxse in 1868 which unequivocally states that Nolan's horse did not veer across the front of the Light Brigade until after Nolan had been hit. And Maxse was one of those in a very good position to know.
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